When a movie franchise puts out the last installment in its line of movies, it has the same feeling you get when you close the final page of a book – at least that’s what I felt when I watched Breaking Dawn Part Two, the last movie in the series of the Twilight movies. Now Netflix, the best streaming service, is set to revive the franchise with an animated series based on Stephenie Meyer’s novel Midnight Sun.
While the series is still in early development and Netflix has yet to unveil an official release date, we already have a sense of how the storyline of the new Twilight series will unfold. The animated show will be adapted from the 2020 novel Midnight Sun by Stephenie Meyer – the writer of the Twilight novel series – which retells the events of the first book from the perspective of Edward Cullen, the teenage vampire who falls for Bella Swan.
Returning to the Twilight production team will be none other than the franchise’s creator herself, Stephenie Meyer, who will assume the position of executive producer with Meghan Hibbett of Fickle Fish Films. Accompanying the two will be Sinead Daly, who’s previous writing experience on one of Netflix Australia's best TV shows The Get Down will be an asset to bringing Edward’s story to life.
Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart played the roles of Edward and Bella in the movie series, which raked in billions of dollars in box office revenue between 2008-2012, but the question as to who will be next to step into the roles for Netflix’s animated series remains unanswered. Regardless of who’s selected and however the series is received, I can tell you that I will be binging it on premiere day.
Netflix, you have my undivided attention
I can imagine that a lot of people will have many questions about Netflix’s upcoming animated series because, while the original movies were box office successes, the ratings from critics are catastrophic. As it stands, the first movie, Twilight (2008), has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 49%, which is tied with its final installment Breaking Dawn Part Two. Eclipse follows with 46%, then New Moon with 28%, and Breaking Dawn Part One comes dead last with 25%, meaning that none of them have made our list of best Netflix movies.
As someone who not only lived through each movie release but once did a non-stop watch party where I watched all five movies in one day (it was lockdown), I admit that the films are objectively bad, but that’s why I’m obsessed with them. And what will undoubtedly annoy me about the upcoming animated series is the snobbish criticism it will receive, which will be purely based on its canon texts. The Twilight movies weren’t designed to be moving and thought-provoking pictures, so why stay mad?
The beauty about the Twilight series is that the entire thing is powered by its failed seriousness, which is the case for a lot of young-adult book to movie adaptations of the early-mid 2010s – just look at movies like The Fault in Our Stars (2014) and the Divergent series (2014-2016). Netflix’s attempt at an animated Twilight series could absolutely crash and burn, and if it does, I’m here for it.
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